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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25724815">Look at this Photograph</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychVamp/pseuds/PsychVamp'>PsychVamp</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>AxG week 2020 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, aryaxgendryweek2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:29:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>586</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25724815</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychVamp/pseuds/PsychVamp</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gendry goes home with Arya for the winter holidays</p>
<p>Arya x Gendry week 2020 prompt 4: Family Traditions</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arya Stark/Gendry Waters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>AxG week 2020 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861555</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Look at this Photograph</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just a short little something I came up. Hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When he’d been a boy, things like family traditions were a foreign concept to him. His mother was an orphan, so she had nothing to pass down to him. They didn’t have a lot of money to be able to make traditions of their own either. No yearly camping trips to the coast for them, like a few of his classmates had. There was no recipe passed down through generations for the perfect apple pie. All they had was each other and when she died, he was left with nothing but memories and a single fading photograph. That photograph was the most precious thing in his life, it was never far away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t until over a decade later, at the age of 24, that he got to really experience his family traditions. Arya, his lovely girlfriend of nearly a year, invited him home with her over the winter holiday break at school. She was 20 and refused to take him staying at school for the break as an acceptable answer. He had met her parents a few months earlier when they’d come to visit her and her brothers had stopped by a few months before that to help celebrate her birthday. He was not a complete stranger to the people but the Stark family home was something else. He instantly felt out of place in his department store clothes the moment he stepped through the front door. He had never been directly exposed to such obvious wealth before and not for the first time he wondered what Arya saw in someone like him. She was happy to show him around the grand mansion, which had apparently been in her family for a dozen generations at least. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She was most proud of the center staircase, not for the grandness of the beautifully carved weirwood banisters, but because of the family history that littered the walls. He could see photographs from every era represented. The bright HD photos were easy to pick out, standing out with their crisp colors. The more muted photos of the last decades followed, which eventually lost color all together and were black and white. There were even hand painted portraits of the previous generations. He had never experienced personal history like this, it was like he was at the Stark family museum.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arya smiled and pointed to what she said was the newest photograph to make the wall. It was her brother Robb and his wife, who was holding a family little boy in her arms. Beside it was a photo of her brother Jon and his fiance Ygritte, then it was a photo of Arya with her sister Sansa, and then her two younger brothers. She nudged him with a smile before they were called away for dinner. Gendry paused a moment before following behind her, looking at the picture of her older brothers with their wives. He wondered if he would ever have a place on the walls, if one day that picture of Arya and Sansa would be replaced with one of her and him, maybe with a child or two surrounding them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He smiled as he walked down the stairs, looking as his girlfriend disappeared around a corner, and suddenly the power of the mansion didn’t seem so scary. He fingered his wallet in his wallet, thinking of the faded picture within it. Yes, he thought, this was a family tradition he could accept, and he couldn’t wait to see what else the Starks had planned for him.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Don't be afraid to let me know what you think!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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